


in a cave, with a box of scraps

by misura



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Childhood, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 20:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15565518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: In which D'avin goes camping.





	in a cave, with a box of scraps

**Author's Note:**

> 75% based on that S2 episode where Khlyen goes to Telen and 25% made up from whole cloth

_I should have gone to Mom's._

Unfair, really, how Dad could be an asshole and bossing him around at the same time, like D'avin was still ten years old or so and didn't known any better.

 _'A couple of weeks of camping won't kill you.'_ Well, the old man'd been right there: this definitely wasn't going to kill him. In fact, it didn't even scare him. _Just a cave._ Way better than when he'd gone camping with the Novas, and they'd all had to earn their badges for Tent Raising.

Stupid tents hadn't even been waterproofed, so then of course it had started raining in the middle of the night. Sure, they'd ended up being evacuated to some hotel, but by then, they'd all been totally soaked and chilled already.

Tenny Kessel'd even caught pneumonia. Of course, Tenny was a jerk and a bully, so maybe that'd been cosmic justice at work or something, in which case, cosmic justice might've been a bit more careful about collateral damage.

Not that anything too bad had happened to anyone else, but still. Good to be in a cave this time, nice and dry no matter what. _Right. This is going to be great. Jerkwad._

He'd go swimming in the morning, before the crowds got here. That might be fun.

 _All by yourself, with no one there to see when the lake monster gets you and drags you under._ Of course, only Johnny still believed in the lake monster. Crazy kid wanted to build a machine to detect it or something, map the lake bottom, that sort of thing. Science shit.

_What was that sound?_

Boring, really. Camping all by himself. As well have gone to Mom. She might've made him pancakes for breakfast.

More likely, she'd have gone and yelled at Dad, and then Johnny'd have been making that face again he always made when Mom and Dad fought, like it was all _his_ fault, which D'avin was pretty damn sure it wasn't.

The sound happened again, which was annoying. The lake monster was just a story, total kids' stuff. 'Be good or the monster of Lake Rounder's gonna come and eat you', that sort of thing. It wasn't _real_. It wasn't -

"D'av, is that you?"

 _Johnny._ Fuck. "No, it's that other kid whose asshole dad's making him sleep out here." What was Johnny even doing here? If the old man'd kicked him out too, D'avin was really going to kill that son of a bitch. Maybe he could claim it'd been an accident or something - 'sorry, officer, my hand slipped'?

Johnny chuckled, sounding way too happy to have gotten tossed out of the house by Dad. "Looking a bit jumpy there, D'av. What, you thought I was the lake monster or something?"

He really was hilarious. Half-right, too, not that D'avin was going to admit that. "No."

Johnny'd brought a battered lantern. Didn't work too good, but good enough to reassure D'avin that it really was Johnny, not some creepy-crawly imitating his voice or something. (Of course, those only existed in comics.) "Hi."

"Hi," D'avin said. He kind of wanted to hug Johnny, but that would totally give away the fact that he'd really been scared for a moment. "What's up? Couldn't sleep without me there?" Better!

Johnny shrugged. "Figured you could use the company."

Good old Johnny. Not that D'avin should be putting up with any of this. Dad found Johnny missing tomorrow morning, bastard was going to go ballistic. "Johnny. You know I love you, bud, but this is a cosmically bad idea. Go home."

"See, now you're just hurting my feelings," Johnny said. "And I even built a pair of infrared goggles."

D'avin'd been wondering what those were. "How?" Stupid question.

"Junkyard stuff. Not that easy, I'll have you know, even for an awesome genius like me."

Awesome genius, indeed. _More like total idiot._ "Thought we agreed you weren't going to go there again because of the space rats."

Johnny scoffed. "Space rats aren't real, D'av."

"I've seen one." In his nightmares, but hey, that counted, right? Plus, way easier to scare Johnny with space rats than try and convince him that maybe some of the stuff people left on a junkyard was, well, junk. As in: not great to use as parts when building shit you were going to put on your head, or wrap around your hand to play-pretend you were a cyborg with lasers shooting out of your fingers.

"No, you haven't." Johnny sounded very sure.

D'avin sighed. "All right, fine, I haven't. Doesn't mean the place is safe."

"Hey, you know what they say." Johnny grinned. "No guts, no glory."

Either of them was going to get themselves some glory, they'd have to get off of this arm-pit of a planet first. D'avin figured the Army'd be his best shot at that. Couple of years of service, a few missions to prove what a badass he was, then he'd come back for Johnny. Show Dad up good.

They'd figure out where to go from there. It was a big universe, after all.

Not seeing Johnny for months and months was going to suck, though. _Too bad he can't stay at Mom's._ No local magistrate was going to rule against the Sheriff, of course. They hadn't before; they weren't going to start now. Justice for all was something that only happened in comics.

"D'av?" Johnny asked.

 _Right._ Plenty of time to worry later. "Sorry. Just spacing out, thinking about the future."

"Whoa. Heavy stuff." Johnny dumped his backpack. It jingled, probably because instead of blankets and clothes, which might have been of some actual use, he'd brought along even more junk-y gadgets - and maybe a couple of comics. "And?"

D'avin yawned. "And what?"

"I figure you're going to be like Captain Apex and I can be, like, Doc Octo."

"You don't have tentacles." Or brains, as proven by his being here, but D'av didn't particularly want to argue. Besides, there'd been that whole Octo vs. Octo arc.

"Details. You can't fly, you don't have a cape and I'm sorry to say this, but you're not a superhero."

"Yet." No need to bring up the cape. He'd been, what, nine at the time and Mom'd had some spare fabric - bright blue, painful to look at and itchy. She and Dad had still been together then. Dad had lifted him up a couple of times, D'avin thought, to make him feel like he was flying.

Hard to imagine the asshole'd ever been that kind of regular, non-crappy dad. _Guess people change._ Some people, anyway. Him and Johnny, now - they were going to grow up, sure, but they weren't going to change. Best buds forever.

"I figure that as long as I'm helping people, I'm good," Johnny said. "Long as there's someone who cares about me, that's enough. I'd rather be happy than famous. Does that make sense?"

"So what you're saying is, you love me and you'll be happy spending the rest of your life as my ship's mechanic or something while I zip around the galaxy being a hero and picking up girls."

Johnny scowled. "That's not how I'd put it. But yeah, sure. You got a ship yet?"

"Working on it," D'avin said, which was a lie.

"Well, you just let me know when you've got one, and I'll come and make sure you don't blow it up by accident, how's that?"

"Fair."

A brief moment while Johnny changed the setting on his lantern. "So. Wanna tell ghost stories? I've got some great ones."

"Pretty sure I've heard them." Not like there were all that many people to hear new ones from.

"Fine. So just stop me if you've heard this one," Johnny said, as if D'avin would ever be that much of a jerk. "When the nights were long and the days were deep there lived a girl. And - "


End file.
